Tvheadend

I have identified a number of issue with the current way that TVH handles parental ratings:

1. DVB OTA parental ratings are not converted from the provided 'age rating' into usable labels like 'PG' or 'FSK 12'.
2. DVB OTA does not correctly process events tagged as 0x00 (undefined) or greater than 0x0F (broadcaster defined).
3. XMLTV <rating> tag has only been partially implemented recognising only MPAA ratings for conversion to age values.

Proposed solution:

I plan to implement a new 'ratingLabel' field and a new user-defined lookup table to populate the field. The table will probably consist of 6 columns:

• OTA Country
• OTA Age
• Display Age
• Display Rating
• XMLTV Rating
• XMLTV System

The OTA age field carries the '….recommended minimum age in years of the end user' as defined in the DVB specifications and as TVH currently interprets the field.

For the DVB OTA issue, the 'country' and 'OTA age' will be used to match the rating display label.

For the XMLTV issue, the 'system' and 'rating' will be used to determine the rating age.

A sample Australian record would look like this (CSV used for illustrative purposes only):

AUS,11,11,PG,PG,ACMA

(Where we get 11 in our adjusted DVB parental_rating_descriptor, display the label 'PG'.)

A US example would look like this:

USA,14,14,PG-13,PG-13,MPAA

(The PG-13 description reads: 'Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13'. I interpret this to mean that the 'minimum age' should be 14 in line with DVB.)

The 'display age' and 'display rating' can be used to remap ratings and/or translated between various ratings systems.

For example:

AUS,15,15,MA,MA,ACMA
AUS,15,15,MA,R,MPAA

This would remap 'R' obtained via an MPAA XMLTV feed to display 'MA' in Australia.

With the 0x00 tags, they should remain 0x00 and not be adjusted by adding 3 like 0x01 to 0x0F. Greater than 0x0F should be able to be manually remapped.

This is where I see stage 1 ending. Producing functional ratings labels.

Future features may include:

• Handling multiple OTA DVB parental rating values.
• Pre-loading the table via the setup wizard.
• User/DVR permissions based on the rating age.